


Set Out Running

by tebtosca



Category: Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Pining, Temporary Character Death, season 8 AU, wincesty longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tebtosca/pseuds/tebtosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam hits a dog, but it's never really about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set Out Running

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annie46fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annie46fic/gifts).



> Written for SPNSpringfling as a gift for Annie46fic

Sam hits a dog, but it's never really about that.

After the vet stops yelling at him, he asks Sam why he's staring.

The name tag on the vet's white coat says "Dr. Ackles" but all Sam knows is this man is wearing his brother's face.

The vet places the dog in Sam's arms. Up close like this, Sam can see the shadow of every freckle. Sees the line of them across the bridge of the vet's nose, but also sees where they stop whereas Dean's continue across the tops of his cheeks like the stroke of a paintbrush.

So not Sam's brother's face at all, and yet.

Sam holds the dog but doesn't stop staring.

==

Jensen likes tequila and strawberry jelly beans and celery sticks slathered in peanut butter. He drives an old Hyundai with a radio tuned to 80s synth rock and wears pale pink button ups under his white vet coat.

There are no salt lines in his path.

No, not Sam's brother at all, and yet.

==

Sam spends seventy-four days, sixteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes in his dead brother's car with his palms over the echo of handprints on his dead brother's steering wheel.

He hits a dog and sees a missing swath of freckles that make him take his hands off that wheel.

After Dr. Ackles stops yelling and Sam stops staring, the words leave Sam's mouth unbidden.

"Have dinner with me tomorrow."

==

"I'm not really good at this relationship thing," Jensen says, sipping his Merlot as he looks at Sam over the light of a candle melting red into the table.

_My brother is dead and I am alone but you look so much like him that you make my soul ache,_ is what Sam thinks in reply.

"I understand," are the words that come out of Sam's mouth instead.

Jensen puts the wineglass down and takes Sam's hand in his. His fingers are smooth and graceful and not calloused at all.

"I think you just might, Sam. I think you just might."

==

Sam tries to stop thinking, and it almost works.

In the soft moonlight of the bedroom, Sam explores the slope of Jensen's back with his eyes. Freckles across the sharpness of shoulder blades, pale skin covering the staccato dips of vertebrae.

No scars, at least not on the outside.

"Hey, babe," Jensen will awaken later, face slack and skin warm with sleep. He'll smile a lazy smile, full pink mouth curling up at the edges in greeting.

He'll slink down Sam's body and put the full pink mouth around Sam's cock, suckling and tonguing and pulling deep into his throat until Sam wraps his hands around his head just to have something to cling to as he falls into the abyss.

The full pink mouth is not Sam's brother's mouth, and yet.

==

The "relationship thing" takes the shape of Jensen's high school sweetheart. His name is Matt and he has bright blue eyes and dog tags around his neck and shrapnel in his leg from war.

Sam respects veterans and all they've seen. Thinks about grizzled faces and the end of a bottle and the sweat-dampened sheets from fire-tinged terror.

He thinks about Dean.

When that happens, he can no longer look at the face that is not his brother's face, and he gets in the car to start the interrupted twenty-eighth minute of the sixteenth hour of the seventy-fourth day.

Jensen's arms are already wrapping around the love that he lost, even as Sam drives with the ghost of his own.

==

Dean comes back to him, the echo of handprints on the steering wheel no longer an echo at all.

"Did you even look for me, Sam?"

_For seventy-four days, sixteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes, I ached for you. In every moment after, I ache for you still,_ is what Sam thinks in reply.

"I hit a dog," are the words that come out of Sam's mouth instead.

"Was there a girl?"

Sam thinks of strawberry jelly beans and freckled shoulder blades and full pink mouths in the hazy blush of daybreak. Thinks of his brother's face that was not his face but was the only face that Sam had left. The face Sam's brother will never be able to understand or forgive.

"You left me to die for a girl."

And yet.


End file.
